You are currently browsing the daily archive for December 31st, 2007.
Among the several online comics I read on a regular basis is the Saturday Bulletin. It’s a great comic that takes an old-timey picture and reinterprets the content. So today’s comic is of Santa tromping off over a hill in the snow, saying “mmm… venison.” Blitzen isn’t feeling so good about it.
The thing that struck me was that it referred to the reindeer “Donner” as “Donder”. Donner is the German word for thunder and Blitzen is lightning. I knew this from my time learning German so it made complete sense and seeing “Donder” struck me as a mistake. I have heard children say “Donder” before, so I thought this was a production mistake bleeding over into adulthood. Lo and behold, Donder is the older version of Donner’s name (Donder being an older spelling of the German word). Originally the pair of reindeer were the Dutch forms Dunder and Bliksem. Check out the Wikipedia entry and the Donder home page, an amusing campaign to restore the name of Donder.
